Tuesday of the Third Week of Easter

Lectionary: 274



So they said to Jesus,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life;
whoever comes to me will never hunger,
and whoever believes in me will never thirst."

Very early in church history, perhaps during the second century, an unknown author compiled our teachings and presented them in "The Jerusalem Catechesis." The book is a guide for teachers and catechumens in the ancient "Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults."
Already we find an effort to explain the inexplicable, what Saint Augustine called "faith seeking understanding." 

He wrote:

Do not, then, regard the Eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ. You know also how David referred to this long ago when he sang: Bread gives strength to man’s heart and makes his face shine with the oil of gladness. Strengthen your heart, then, by receiving this bread as spiritual bread, and bring joy to the face of your soul.

May purity of conscience remove the veil from the face of your soul so that by contemplating the glory of the Lord, as in a mirror, you may be transformed from glory to glory in Christ Jesus our Lord. To him be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

Twenty centuries later our historians can recount the long history of explanations of the Eucharistic mystery. Occasionally, some have said the Eucharist is "symbolic" or, worse, "just a symbol."

I find such explanations counterproductive. They only come between the Lord and his Church; they interfere when I receive the Body and Blood of Jesus. 

The same people who object to priests as mediators will mediate this mystery with the word "symbol." If the Bread and Wine are symbols of Jesus, my seventy year old body is a symbol of me, and somewhat irreplaceable. 

I prefer the blunt challenge of the Jerusalem Catechesis, "Since he himself has said quite categorically, "This is my blood," who would dare to question it and say that it is not his blood?"

My response to that is to say, "Amen!" when I receive the Eucharist -- that is, "My Lord!"  And shut up. No further explanation, explication, interpretation, analysis, or definition can help. Not transubstantiation, consubstantiation, transignification or transfinalization. 

Please don't bother me with all that; I am with Jesus.